New Straits Times - Malaysia News Online

In spiritual mode
By Faridul Anwar Farinordin and Shannon Teoh

Nov 5 2005:
PLAYING THE ANGEL
Depeche Mode
(Mute/EMI)

A PRODUCT of Britain’s new romantic movement, Depeche Mode went on to become the quintessential electro-pop band of the 1980s. One of the first acts to establish a musical identity based completely around the use of synthesisers, the band saw out the entire alternative rock movement spearheaded by grunge and continues a steady pace towards the stratosphere of legend.

Whether its dramatic and sometimes almost gothic sound were by design or a matter of survival is up for debate but that debate will be a pretty inconsequential one. Playing The Angel is quite simply, a return to greatness.
Prior to this release, vocalist Dave Gahan, said that being in Depeche Mode was better than it has been in 15 years. Some quick math points to the epochal Violator era. So Ultra, Exciter and Songs of Faith and Devotion be damned, Dave friggin’ Gahan wants you to know that this one is the bomb.

Virtually every song has a religious dimension, with narrator as either believer, blasphemer or repenter. Not unfamiliar for a band that produced Personal Jesus, but here, there’s less irony, more bald-faced truth or, at least, the search for it.
The biggest clue is the footnote on the rear art, "pain and suffering in various tempos".
The result is obviously precious but engagingly so. It’s polished but unmanipulated. It is somehow today whilst being 1990. This 25-year-old band is showing its age, the same way the best wines do. — ST

Selected tracks: A Pain That I’m Used To, John the Revelator, The Sinner In Me, Macro
Performance: ****½